Those distractions Treesaver is trying to spare us from are also what monetize the content — but Fortes says he’s not against advertising, just how we display it with the content now. By lowering the bar to the content (as he puts it), by letting users easily flip along, fewer, cleaner ads can be monetized more effectively. (more…)

“I was observing what was going on with mobile devices, and I realized I could read an entire book on my iPhone,” Edmiston said. “The more I thought about it, I really felt like there was something transformative going on here. And at the same time, there’s a huge pool of talented people who can create high quality content that people will pay for.”

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It’s no secret that Time Inc., like every other magazine publisher, would very much like to work with Google. Both because they think the new Android tablets will be a hit, and because publishers want leverage when they talk to Steve Jobs.

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“Our readers have always preferred the Economist in print because it is a lean-back, immersive reading experience,” said Oscar Grut, the Economist’s managing director of digital editions. “The internet has not been a threat so far, because it cannot replicate this reading experience.”

via Mark Sweney, Economist launches iPhone and iPad apps | Media | guardian.co.uk.

The problem with Gawker Media’s current model—and this is true of many other sites, too, including the Huffington Post—is that it’s based on pageviews and those tyrannical CPMs. It’s essentially a junk-mail direct marketing model, which Batty is very comfortable with: watch him talk about how Gawker Media has “massively scaled our ability to deliver consumer activations,” whatever that means.

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Brands face five types of integration. They are all important and most are hard but necessary.

• Paid, Owned, Earned
• Global & local
• Across the Enterprise
• Inside & Outside the Organization
• Inside Every Job

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Mark Zuckerberg’s company is working hard to win over heavyweight content distributors, hoping to convince them to link their sites up with Facebook, or to make their existing links deeper. The pitch: Connect your site to ours, and we’ll drive you eyeballs and help you hang on to them. And in return, we’d like to know more about your users.

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